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Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics [192, 193, 194]

has been characterized as boring: the standing 'now' that sets us in place and at the same time lets us go. This standing 'now' stands during the evening, it is this 'during' itself. What is boring as such is accordingly diffused in its strange ungraspability throughout the whole enduring of the evening. Our passing the time must correspond to this. We do indeed pass time, we pass away the standing 'now'. We drive it on-not the 'now' that drags, in order to make it pass more quickly, but the standing 'now'. We pass it away, pass away this standing time, the during within which we are immersed in this evening. Our passing the time drives away whatever is boring. Because the 'during' is what is boring, the whole evening must be organized as a way of passing the time. Yet because what is boring is here diffused throughout the particular situation as a whole, it is far more oppressive-despite its ungraspability. It oppresses precisely in and during the inconspicuous way in which we are held at a distance in our passing the time.

If we thus summarize our characterization of the second form of boredom, we see that in the first case what is boring comes from outside, as it were, so that we become bored by .... A particular situation with its circumstances transposes us into boredom. Here on the other hand, in the second case, what is boring does not come from outside: it arises from out of Dasein itself. This means that precisely because the boredom is dissipated throughout the whole situation in this creeping way, it cannot be bound to this situation as such. The second form of boredom is less situation-bound than the first. What surrounds us in the second situation, those beings that hold us captive---even though we let ourselves go in their direction and are entirely there alongside and part of things-are, as regards the boredom itself and its arising, only what accompanies it, only the occasion on which it comes to arise. Boredom here means oneself being bored-and indeed bored with .... In this second boredom we are held more toward ourselves, somehow enticed back into the specific gravity of Dasein, even though, indeed precisely because in so doing we leave our own proper self standing and unfamiliar. In the first form, by contrast, we are also somehow alongside ourselves and oppressed-for otherwise there would be no boredom as an attunement at all-yet nonetheless that first form is an uneasy fidgeting that is directed outward.


§28. The second form of boredom as becoming
more profound in contrast to the first.


We have thus already indicated in what sense we must address the second form of boredom as the more profound boredom in contrast to the first. We are asking about how this boredom becomes more profound, however, so that from the direction in which it becomes more profound we may obtain a preliminary


Martin Heidegger (GA 29/30) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics

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